"For those of us who buy ebooks, the biggest impact we can have here is to buy our ebooks from Barnes and Noble. This isn’t a moral choice, but a practical one. If we want to avoid having our digital reading lives shaped by Amazon and Amazon alone, we have to support someone who can serve as a check on it. And at this moment, that’s Barnes and Noble."
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I can’t disagree more. This feels, to me, akin to saying “Shop at Target if you want to slow down Wal-Mart” - which disregards the role the smaller stores have to play, and diminishes their importance.
A good many independent booksellers are set up to sell e-books now, and proximity isn’t an issue. IndieBound’s website is a great place to start; they can connect you with local booksellers.
What’s more, if anything frees up publishers from having to toe the line when Amazon (or B&N, should they reach retail dominance) starts price controlling, it’s an open distribution through the Internet.
“Why You Should Consider Buying Your eBooks from Barnes and Noble“ (via bookriot)
(via bookriot)
Here’s a picture that captures very well why the bookseller Barnes & Noble will likely go the way of Borders.
That’s not a bookseller; that’s the back room at a Radio Shack. People don’t go to bookstores for e-readers, or e-books. Anybody tech-savvy enough to want in on the “e-reader revolution” (I just threw up in my mouth a little bit) will order their goods online, and that’s not going to subsidize brick-and-mortar bookstores.
What’s more, e-books can - and will always - be pirated and shared. Try doing that with a physical Harry Potter book.
Instead:
- Make the Barnes & Noble name synonymous with clean, well-lighted places to get books. Not stuffed animals, not toys, not compact discs (because, why?). Go ahead and have one shelf for e-readers, and make it easy for people to download the e-books, but why put so many eggs in the basket of a publishing trend that is a handful of years old, instead of going with a book format that’s been around for generations?
- Why not try locally-owned franchises? It would help to keep money in the community of the bookstore, it would encourage more loyalty to the bookstore (who is loyal to B&N right now? anyone?).
- Why not make these stores the size of a bookstore, instead of the size of a warehouse? Wouldn’t that cut down on the overhead a bit?
Lastly, put on a tie. You aren’t fooling anyone. (Maybe that’s just me.)
